I have been putting together a few jigsaw puzzles recently. It is nice to come home after a long day and sit down for awhile and totally absorb myself in a puzzle. It is relaxing to clear my mind and focus on finding the right pieces. This has been a week when a puzzle was much needed.

In my post Another Puzzle I mentioned that there was a reason behind the next puzzle I was going to put together.

While at the book store I saw this puzzle titled Reddish Egret based on a print by John James Audubon. When I saw the puzzle the image clicked with another in my brain and I just had to buy it. More on this at the end of the post.

Of course the first part of doing a puzzle for me is to find the edge pieces. Can you see some edge pieces in this picture?

Of course finding the last few edge pieces can sometimes be a little hard and you have to go through the pieces one by one to find them. I also found the two eyes of the birds while hunting for the edge pieces.

Here you see the edge pieces all together and I am ready to start filling in the interior.

After several sessions the puzzle started coming together. It was easy to find the blues and reds, and then the puzzle got a bit harder.

You may think that these are male and female, but there is no sexual dimorphism with the reddish egret. Instead they is a dark or light morph. The dark egret is complete and the white egret is now outlined. Pieces were going together rather quickly at this stage.

Then came the hard part. There was some color variation in the sky, but not much. Now I had to really concentrate on the shapes of the pieces and less on the color.

However after many sessions with the puzzle it was finally complete. Don’t the two reddish egrets look beautiful?

And now for why I wanted to get the puzzle. I knew that at home I had an Audubon print of the reddish egret. From my grandmother I received two partial sets of Audubon bird prints. I knew that I had seen this one.

This print is #256. At the time Audubon put together the print the binomial name for the reddish egret was (Dichromanassa rufscens). Today the binomial name has changed to (Egretta rufescens).

Today the reddish egret is classified as “near threatened” and in some areas as “threatened”. In the text below the print there is a quote that says “Evidently the Reddish Egrets of the Florida coast were exterminated by plume hunters” (Bent).

They are beautiful birds, you can see why they were hunted for their plumage in the 1800’s.

I have my next puzzle ready to go, but I may keep this one together for awhile since it is so beautiful.